And staffers worry that if they report sexual harassment, it will be hard to find another job.

“It’s a small community,” she said.

Sloan says the structure of Congress may also contribute. A corporation with a board of directors and procedures for dealing with harassment charges is different from a politician whose bosses — the voters — are hundreds of miles away.

“Members of Congress only answer to constituents and by the time an election comes around, they may have forgotten about it — if they heard about it at all,” Sloan said.

The personal offices of each member are run, in many ways, as separate fiefdoms.

“Those offices have a king or a queen, and the Congress person is the last word,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Executive branch workers, by contrast, have inspectors general and the Office of Government Ethics as a check on their behavior.

The Senate and House both have ethics committees to deal with complaints against members. But the committees are run by other members, who may be reticent to throw the book at a colleague.

Harassment is just one slice of the scandal pie. Over the years, lawmakers have been accused of taking other liberties as well, such as using taxpayer-paid staff to run personal errands, pressuring aides to work on their campaign staffs and taking bribes. Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., was convicted of corruption charges in 2009 after the FBI found $90,000 in cash — wrapped in foil — in his home freezer.

In today’s information society, it should be harder for powerful politicians to get away with things, said Angela Canterbury, director of public policy at the Project on Government Oversight.

But, she said, Congress still is short on whistle-blowers because people who report wrongdoing don’t have enough protections from reprisals. Congress excluded itself from the rules of the Freedom of Information Act and the Whistleblower Protection Act.